This year we've been keeping track of some of the surprising things that we have learned. For December, we're compiling a list of some of the things we've learned this year.
Here are the "Today I Learned", or TILs, from September 2021.
September 2, 2021:
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TIL One inch of rainfall equals 4.7 gallons of water per square yard
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TIL about hobby tunneling - people who dig tunnels for a hobby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling
The American engineer and supercomputer architect Seymour Cray is known to have been a hobby tunneller. Cray built an 8 by 4 feet (2.4 by 1.2 m) cedar-floored tunnel under his house, explaining that the digging helped him to think about computer designs. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem," he said.
September 5, 2021:
- TIL the human eye can see more shades of green than any other color. I don't quite understand why, but it is deeply tied up with rod cells vs cone cells, the different densities of those types of cells, and which frequencies of light they capture. Also relates to why red-green colorblindness is the most common type, and why green screen backgrounds produce the best edge detection for the human eye. And probably evolved so that long-ago humans could better detect and evade predators stalking around in the brush.
September 6, 2021:
- TIL Fargo, North Dakota is right across the ND-MN border from Cass County, MN, where my maternal grandfather grew up.
September 15, 2021:
- TIL: legs for days https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/15/rainbow-colours-and-legs-for-days-australian-fly-species-named-after-drag-star-rupaul
September 16, 2021:
- TIL TIL: All GISers know about null island (located at 0, 0), but today I learned about Soulbuoy, which is actually located at 0, 0 and is part of a 17-piece buoy network, all named after music genres.
September 20, 2021:
- TIL one in every three Americans experiencing homelessness lives in California. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2020-AHAR-Part-1.pdf
September 24, 2021:
- TIL the ham sandwich theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem
September 29, 2021:
- TIRLFTTT (today I re-learned for the third time) about apscheduler, this is kind of embarrassing, I also forgot its name so I spent 15 minutes trying to find it. https://apscheduler.readthedocs.io/en/3.x/userguide.html